


Petals

by anotetofollow



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Fic Exchange, Friendship, Gift Fic, Light Angst, Pre-Relationship, Relationship Advice, Skyhold (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:34:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24189748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotetofollow/pseuds/anotetofollow
Summary: “It’s just…” he makes a gesture, playing for time while he works out the words. “I know you and Tevi are… close. Must be strange for you. Her being made Inquisitor.”“Yeah, no shit.” Sera folds her arms. “So much for that one, eh?”(my half of a highly specific 'Sera and Blackwall give each other romance advice' exchange with @southwarden - her halfhere)
Relationships: Female Adaar/Sera, Female Inquisitor/Sera
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	Petals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [southwarden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/southwarden/gifts).



> She's the grace of this world  
> She's too pure  
> For the likes of this world  
> This world is a whore
> 
> Tear the petals off of you  
> And make you tell the truth  
> Tear the petals off of you ([x](https://open.spotify.com/track/3G7hlx1gFFE7oNnTbqb2fy))

Sera has places for people.

With Varric, it’s the warm spot by the hearth, the place he goes to think. The way he talks there isn’t like how it is at the Keep, all big words and bluster. By the fire he’s quiet, listens hard before speaking. She knows he’s hurting hard under it all, saw the way he half-collapsed with relief when he had word from Hawke. He’d be alright, if he spent half as much time looking in as he does looking out.

Cassandra stands on the walls when she thinks no one is watching. She looks out over the mountains, sometimes for hours, her face troubled behind the still. Sometimes Sera stands with her. They don’t talk much, sometimes not at all, but the Seeker always smiles at her before she leaves. Not a bad sort, given the size of the stick up her arse.

She meets Bull in the garden some nights. They both thought no one would find them there, but they found each other instead. He recites words in a language she doesn’t know, like he’s practising something, while she sits in the pavillion and fletches arrow after arrow after arrow. Soon she’s learned the words without meaning to, and he can’t keep from laughing when she speaks them along with him.

The Inquisitor is harder to pin down. Sometimes Tevi’s place is on the tavern balcony, too close to Sera’s own place for comfort. Sometimes it’s the practice yard, where they leave the straw dummies hanging in ribbons. Sometimes it’s the in-between places; on the stairs, in the steams, passing across the courtyard. While Sera always has one eye looking, Tevi seems to be everywhere. It makes her nervous, antsy. She wants _them_ in a little box somewhere, easily found, not all around like air.

He is easier. There’s a tumbledown bit of wall that no one’s bothered to fix yet, a place behind it that’s grown wild with dandelions, cow parsley, foxgloves. Blackwall always knows to look for her there. They sneak bottles from the tavern sometimes, sit when they’re sick of the keep and the high-ups that flounce around it. Sick of being looked at like they’re nothing.

He finds her one evening, when the sky is all pink-touched clouds and hazy light. She has her back to the wall and is writing furiously in her book, pouring out a day’s worth of thoughts with nowhere better to go.

“Evening.”

“Alright.” She doesn’t look up. “You bring anything? Thirsty.”

He produces two bottles of something, passes one to Sera while he finds a patch of grass to sit in. She uncorks it with her teeth and sips. Beer that tastes of oak and dried apricots, reminds her of Denerim.

For a while they don’t say anything at all. Sera likes that about him. Doesn’t expect her to drop everything to talk, isn’t full of suspicions and lectures and questions like some of the others. His head’s as full as hers, she thinks, just in a closed-up way, all turned in and thick with shadows, and she’s sure he needs the quiet as much as she does.

Sera stops writing in the middle of a sentence and closes the book. Not everything has to be finished. She picks a daisy from the grass and plucks the petals from it one by one. _She loves me. She loves me not. She loves me._ _She loves me not._

“Penny for them,” Blackwall says.

Sera shrugs. “Not much. Weird here, innit?”

“Here here? Or Skyhold here?”

“Skyhold here.”

“It’s a secret castle on the top of a mountain,” he says. “Bound to be a little odd.”

“Not just the _place_ though,” Sera says, pulling harder at the petals. “Feels… different, doesn’t it? To Haven.”

“I know,” he sighs. “I was almost getting comfortable there.”

“Me too.” Sera puts the flower in her lap, takes another swig of beer. “It’s too much. Sky’s too big. Too many prancing arseholes with masks and stupid hats.”

“Cheers to that.”

She touches her bottle to his. “And all this Inquisitor business,” she says. “Thought we’d be fixing the hole in the sky and snap, done. Didn’t think there’d be a frigging castle. Frigging army. Didn’t think they’d put her in charge of saving the world all of a sudden.”

“Ah.”

There’s a tone in his voice that makes Sera scowl. “‘Ah’, what? And what’s that look for?”

“It’s just…” he makes a gesture, playing for time while he works out the words. “I know you and Tevi are… close. Must be strange for you. Her being made Inquisitor.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Sera folds her arms. “So much for that one, eh?”

Blackwall frowns at her. “Have you two fallen out?”

“No.” She digs her toe into the dirt, rooting up a thistle. “Don’t have to. She’s all big now as well. I mean, obviously. But not that way. Important big.” 

“If we’re being fair,” he says carefully. “That’s hardly her fault. I don’t think she’s delighted about her new title either.”

“Doesn’t matter, does it?” Sera feels something twist in her stomach, like a hand squeezing. “She’s up there with them now. Not down here with us. That changes people. Who has time to run around with you and me, when there’s nobles to please and arses to kiss?”

“Have you not seen her, then?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Is she spending more time toadying up to the nobles than she does with you?”

Sera is caught short. “No,” she says. “Not yet. But it’ll happen, won’t it? It’s bound to.” But really, she’s seen Tevi no less often than she did in Haven. More, if anything. The new Inquisitor hasn’t stopped visiting, hasn’t changed in any way that Sera can see. She looks a little tired, maybe, that’s all. But still. But still.

Blackwall shrugs. “I don’t see why it has to happen. Oh, certainly, they’ve let her into their circle. For now. But she’s not one of them any more than we are. Maybe less. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s not many qunari in the Orlesian court.”

“Should be,” Sera says. “It’d be more fun to look at.”

“Well, you would think that.”

She kicks him. “Seriously though. You really think she won’t change? Even with all that power?”

“I’m not sure why you’re asking me at all,” he says. “You know her much better than I do.”

“Think I do,” Sera says quietly. “Been wrong before.” The girl in Val Firmin with eyes like still water, who’d kissed her underneath the apple tree then disappeared. The baker’s daughter in Highever, all sweet words till she’d met another.

“Haven’t we all.” Blackwall stares out over the mountains, thinking his own thoughts. “But I’ve seen the way she looks at you. I don’t think there’s any hiding that.”

She glances up. “How?”

“Like she’s been wandering around lost for months, and you just showed her the way to go.”

Sera snorts. “That’s not a thing.”

“I’m not Varric,” he says. “If you want metaphors, go to him.”

“But she does, though? You wouldn’t make that up?”

“Of course not. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed yourself.”

Sera thinks about that. Thinks about how Tevi stands, slope-shouldered to hear her, thinks about how she laughs from her stomach, the way her eyelashes catch the light when she blinks, fast as hummingbirds. But she could be like that with everyone. How can Sera know what she’s like with her compared to the others, when she’s always there to see it?

“What do you think is going to happen, Sera?” he asks suddenly. “Honestly. What do you think will go wrong?”

List too long for speaking. She picks the reasons floating on the surface. “First, like I said, she’s high up now. Not like us. Big things to do, big people to see. Who’s got time for me? Talking wrong, acting stupid, not wanting the right things.” Sera regurgitates the words like bile, speaking as they spoke to her, a hundred little heartbreaks.

“Hang on,” Blackwall frowns. “Where’s this come from? If she’s said that—”

“No,” Sera says quickly. “ _She_ hasn’t. Not her. It’s not— shit.” She leans her head back against the wall. “It’s not that she has, it’s that she _could_. She might. That’s the problem. Don’t know, not for sure. So why wait to find out? More likely to be shit than not. It usually is.”

Blackwall taps his finger against the neck of the bottle, like he’s thinking. “Sera,” he says. “Those rich pricks up at the keep. When do they do when they look at us?”

“Get all sniffy behind their fans. Act like we’re shit on their shoe. Why you asking?”

“And why do they do that?”

Sera rolls her eyes. “Andraste’s arse, if you’re trying to teach a lesson just get it over with, yeah? Can’t be bothered with this.”

He chuckles. “Fair enough. We hate them because they look at us and see every commoner they’ve ever had the displeasure to encounter. They judge us on that, no matter what we do, no matter what we say. Right?”

“Right.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing with her?” he asks. “Deciding how she’ll act because of how others have acted before her? You’ve not once told me anything she’s done that you’re upset about. It’s always what she might do, or what she could do. What _is_ she doing, Sera? That’s what you’ve got to ask yourself.”

What is Tevi doing? Tevi is sitting on the balcony with her, throwing peas at the barman. Tevi is bringing her ink because she noticed her well was empty. Tevi is throwing herself in the way of a bandit with his daggers trained on her back. Tevi is asking her what she thinks and listening. Tevi is smiling at her across a crowded room, is skipping out on fancy dinners to drink with her, is looking at her like she’s really there.

“Shit,” Sera says. “You’re actually good at this, you know?”

He laughs. “I stumble through somehow.”

“I mean it.” She looks at him, smiles in the real way. “Thank you. Head gets messy sometimes. Hard to see the way through it.”

“Sounds familiar.” Blackwall takes another drink. “Just promise me you won’t end this before it’s had a chance to start. Rare enough to find something good in the world, never mind when the world’s in this much of a mess.”

“I’ll try.” _Something good in the world._ And that’s what Tevi is, isn’t she? Something good, really good, someone right and true and real to her bones. Someone who thinks that she’s good, too.

Sera picks up the flower from her lap and plucks the last of the petals. _She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not._ The last pulls cleanly from the stem. _She loves me_.


End file.
